Grey wins AOL account in Germany

Published on June 09, 1999.

HAMBURG--AOL Europe, the Internet online service formed in 1995 as a joint partnership between America Online and German media group Bertelsmann, has appointed Grey Advertising, Duesseldorf, to handle its German account. It previously worked with Hamburg-based ad agencies Scholz & Friends and Faktor 3 on a project basis. Grey will open a Hamburg office to service the client.

Several months ago, AOL Europe hired as its European manager Andreas Schmidt, the former head of Gruner & Jahr listing magazine "TV Today." Mr. Schmidt's immediate task is to grab market leadership from Deutche Telekom's T-Online, which has around two million subscribers to AOL's one million users in Germany.

Europewide, AOL reaches 2.8 million households, making it the largest pan-European Internet online service, serving a total of almost 8 million users. AOL Europe manages all of AOL's and CompuServe's European services in 12 operations across seven countries.